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Siri’s been reading my messages and I love it

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Announce Messages with Siri
Getting Siri to read iMessages is AirPod Pro’s best feature.
Photo: Cult of Mac

As of iOS 13, you can have your iPhone read out incoming iMessages through your AirPods. And this — along with their awesome sound and noise-canceling abilities — is my favorite feature of the AirPods Pro. On paper, it’s a small feature in a long list. But in everyday use, Announce Messages with Siri makes a huge difference in how I use my iPhone.

How to use iOS 13’s new ‘Remind me when messaging’ feature

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Remind when messaging
Remember things, when you need them.
Photo: Estée Janssens

The Reminders app got a total revamp in iOS 13, making it way quicker and easier to add due dates, alerts and location-based notifications to new reminders. But it also added one killer new feature: Remind me when messaging.

This lets you add a contact to the reminder, and the next time you’re messaging that person, a notification will pop up.

See iOS 13’s best unannounced features [Video]

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iOS 13 on an iPhone X
Have you upgraded yet?
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

After spending time playing with the iPadOS 13 developer beta and iOS 13 beta , it’s clear there are tons of nice changes coming to Apple’s mobile platforms this fall.

Cupertino highlighted the biggest ones at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference. However, there’s a bunch of smaller stuff they didn’t tell us about. While there are hundreds of “under the hood” changes, these are the best iOS 13 features Apple didn’t announce.

Best unannounced iOS 13 features

How to add a custom iMessage avatar in iOS 13

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Memoji are awesome. Here's how to make your own.
Now you can use Memoji in iMessage profiles.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

You know how you can add an avatar to pretty much any social app ever, and all your friends, family, contacts, etc., will see it? Well, in iOS 13 you can finally do the same for iMessages.

No longer will you have to hope that your contacts use a nice photo of you, or worry that your boss is using a picture of a cute pig or pussycat to represent you in the group chat. Now you can add and share your own avatar, or even a Memoji. Let’s see how.

How to make a great Memoji

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Memoji are awesome. Here's how to make your own.
Memoji are awesome. Here's how to make your own.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

iOS 12 lets you create Memoji, your own custom Animoji. What’s an Animoji? It’s a little animated character that — thanks to some facial recognition tricks from the latest iPhones’ TrueDepth cameras — copies your expressions live. This turns the cute Animoji critters into little virtual face puppets.

Now you don’t need to rely on a stock Animoji like Apple’s monkey, dog or space alien. You can create your own custom Memoji from scratch. You can make a virtual version of yourself, or you can create an original character. Or, as we’ll do today, you can copy a celebrity. Who? Let’s see …

iPhone lets Phillies fans order a ballpark beer by text

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It's the fullfillment of many a baseball fan's dreams: beer by text.
It's the fullfillment of many a baseball fan's dreams: beer by text.
Photo: Aramark

The Philadelphia Phillies and Aramark started a pilot program that lets fans order beer from their seats using an iPhone.

The service makes use of Apple Business Chat, a service that launched this spring designed to let customers send messages to companies without strings attached.

New Apple Pay ad miraculously makes payments funny

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New ad makes Apple Pay in Messages easy and funny.
Warning messages from your landlord aren't always a joke, but a new ad for Apple Pay in Messages is.
Screenshot: Apple

Apple Pay isn’t just for trips to Starbucks. It can also be used to send or receive money from friends. Or your landlord, as shown in a humerous new ad.

Money can be transferred in a simple text using the Messages app. This works for sending and receiving the cash, after Apple Wallet has been properly set up.

Watch the new advertisement for Apple Pay in Messages now:

How to remove location data from photos you share

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Remove location data maps on bench

Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

When you share a photo via email, iMessage or most other apps, you also send the location of that image. No big deal, right? You’re only sending pictures to people you know anyway. But what about when you sell something on a site like Craigslist or eBay? If you don’t manually remove location data from your pictures, anyone can see where you took your photo, which is probably your home.

Right away, anyone can see where you live, and what you have at home. You still might not care, but if you do, here’s how to remove all that information before you send a photograph. (You’ll also learn about an interesting quirk in iMessage.)

Unicode of Death got you down? Here’s how to fix it

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Unicode of Death 2015
I didn't actually send someone the Unicode of Death. Don't believe anything Rob LeFebvre says.
Screen: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac

Some iPhone users are getting a flashback to 2013 as a new version of the so-called “Unicode of Death” has returned to wreak havoc with their iMessages.

The security exploit, which activates when someone sends you the message in the image above, reportedly forces jailbroken handsets into Safe Mode and completely removes other units’ ability to access the Messages app.